Domestic coal onesy-twosy handling question

[NW Mailing List]

Harry,

     This sounds very much like the movement of fresh fruit and 
vegetables from the West & South-West. Load 'em up and send them off 
toward Chicago or St. Louis and let the traders/brokers buy and sell 
them as they move. reconsign as needed.
      Watching the N&W video of Lamberts Point, one gets the impression 
that it was the highest grade of mine output. Can I assume commercial 
coal was of a lesser quality? Though I see old newspaper ads touting 
"Blue Star" coal, etc... At least from what I saw at the end of the home 
& business consumption of coal, a coal yard could get nice lump 
bituminous on one load and the next would be what we called "bug dust" 
on the Great Lakes. The coal yards I saw received at least three types, 
bituminous, briquets and anthracite. By the time I started as a yard 
brakie at the very end of the NKP in 1964, I think I helped deliver 
maybe 2 or 3 carloads of coal. I'm sure by 1966 that trade was dead in 
Northern Ohio, as we went looking for some coal for one of my sisters 
high school science class projects and we could find none for sale by 
looking in the yellow pages.

     WJPowers


On 3/15/2017 3:40 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List wrote:
> WJP:
> This is not the whole answer, but commercial coal agents would send loads
> of yet unsold coal to terminals such as Portsmouth, Roanoke, Potomac 
> Yards.
> Consigned to the coal agent, the cars would layover until  some company
> needed coal in a hurry or a "mom and pop" coal dealer ordered a car.
> The cars were known in the trade as "rollers".  When a buyer was found,
> a diversion was issued and the through rate (cheapest) was protected 
> provided.
> the cars didn't go more than 10% out-of-route.
> The consistency of commercial coal was different from utility coal and 
> most export
> coal, therefore it wasn't included in unit trains and export coal for 
> Lamberts
> Point and had to be handled as if it were merchandise traffic. 
> Bluefield would make
> a preliminary classification segregating export coal from utility coal 
> and commercial
> coal.  After 1959, commercial coal for connections at Norfolk was set 
> off at Portlock,
> so it had to be divorced from coal for Lamberts Point.  Although a 
> merchandise
> train, No. 84 would fill to the tonnage rating with commercial coal 
> including the
> onesy-twosys.  No. 84 even had a Norfolk-NS classification (coal for 
> Beaufort
> County (NC) schools. Harry Bundy
>
>
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